David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I move:

To delete all words after ''State;'' and substitute the following:—

"— notes that the programme for government commits the Government to; 'reform the current law on employees' rights to engage in collective bargaining, (Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2001), so as to ensure compliance by the State with

recent judgements of the European Court of Human Rights;

— notes that a single unsecured and unguaranteed bond in Anglo Irish Bank to the value of €700 million is due to mature in the next five weeks;

— proposes greater protections be put in place for employees facing collective redundancy situations;

— proposes that where a company is making redundancies that a notice period of 90 days shall be provided by that company;

and

— calls on the Government to:

(i) enact the promised legislation on the right to collective bargaining as a priority in the legislative programme, and

(ii) cease payment to all senior bond holders payment in Anglo Irish Bank including the €700 million due to mature shortly and divert a significant portion of the savings to job creation and tackling unemployment.".

I welcome the motion tabled by the Labour Party. Senator Daly mentioned this morning that the motion would come to zero and this is a view I do not share. There is a good intention behind the motion and I support much of what is in it. It deals in a very real way with the shabby way in which the workers at TalkTalk were treated in Waterford city. Like the Leader of the House, Senator Cummins, I come from Waterford city and represent it and the county. Our city and county is hurt because of the job losses seen over the past decade, including those in Waterford Crystal, ABB Transformers, The Foundry, Teva Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline and many other companies in the manufacturing, construction and service sector. All of these have been devastating blows to Waterford, both in the city and the county.

We are not alone as Waterford and the south east is under-performing. That area has 3% more people on the live register than is the case in other regions. There are nearly 500,000 people in the State out of work, which is an indication of the poor performance of the domestic economy and that we are still not getting the job recovery we need. It also shows the madness of how we are bankrupting ourselves as a country to repay speculators and bondholders at a time when so many people are out of work. That is the reason we included the portion of the amendment dealing with banks. The amendment mentions the €700 million that will be paid to Anglo Irish Bank to repay one bondholder. That is the kind of madness we are seeing in the country when people like the employees of TalkTalk are losing their jobs.

I welcome the motion as it highlights the real problems facing workers, although we have tabled an amendment because it falls short. Part of the amendment calls on the Government to deliver on the promised legislation to make good on workers' rights and vindicate the rights of all workers to collective bargaining. This was promised in the programme for Government and the parties now in power indicated that every worker would have the right to collective bargaining. That is one of the issues on which I hope the Minister will deliver.

Currently, the Minister is reviewing employment rights bodies and merging some of them. I do not have a difficulty in that regard but I ask the Minister to ensure we use the opportunity to protect and enhance the rights of workers. The Labour Party motion mentions 30 days' notice, which was given to TalkTalk employees, but putting our hand on heart we must admit that this is a minimum requirement which companies should give. That legislation is already in place. We should either amend the legislation to reflect a 60-day or 90-day notice or we simply cry crocodile tears for the workers. We will end up in a position, either in the south east or any other region in the State, where other workers will find themselves in the same predicament as the TalkTalk employees.

We have already had this discussion with the Minister and, interestingly, he has indicated that he is not supportive of changing that portion of employment rights legislation. That worries me because as with the reform of the joint labour commissions and the merging of the employment rights bodies, there is an attempt by the Minister's party in particular to hollow out much of the current employment rights legislation that was fought hard for by workers. That should be protected and not in any way neutralised by the Leader's party. It would be fundamentally wrong.

There is something obscene about the money being allocated to the banks. A recent report indicated that over €65 billion will have gone into the banks over the course of the next number of years if we continue along the same path. It seems that there are tea and biscuits for the workers at TalkTalk while bankers and people who speculated and gambled are taking the money. Waterford workers and people up and the down the country who have been let down by the State are out of work. We had the discussion this morning about civil and human rights, with the president of the Irish Human Rights Commission before the House. I argued that one of the fundamental rights in any society must be the right to a job or employment and yet nearly 500,000 people are out of work in the country.

Many people in Waterford are prepared to give this Government and Minister fair wind. The Minister met with public representatives and committed to being part of developing a jobs plan for the south east and asking enterprise agencies to see what they could do. There will be opportunities for public representatives to feed into that, and I had a conversation with the Minister outside the Chamber about some proposals I made on what could be done to create employment in Waterford. The time for talking is over and we need action, not just in Waterford but across the country.

I support the Labour Party motion because it deals with the disgraceful way in which the workers at TalkTalk were treated. We must move beyond giving sympathy to the workers and simply tabling motions. We must get real on the issues affecting people in this country, including the working people being let down because legislation is not sufficiently robust. If we want to follow through on the courage of our convictions, I ask Senators to support the Sinn Féin amendment which at least proposes action in the form of a 90-day notice period.

Senator Bacik argued that our amendment missed the point but it goes right to the heart of the matter. We cannot continue with a position where the country is being broken economically and financially. We are borrowing significant amounts but almost all of that money is going into the banks. We speak about employment proposals and some of the ideas formulated by the Labour Party when in opposition, such as front-loading critical infrastructure and labour-intensive programmes, but we are cutting capital programmes up and down the country. We must face up to that reality and deliver at some point not just a jobs initiative that does nothing-----